They smootch.

Inktober Day 4 “Fang”

Melon fanart~

It’s so canon, and it’s utterly uncanon.They’re nemesis. They’re allies. They’re perfect for each other. They have nothing in common. They’re madly in love. They can’t stand each other. Their chemistry is insane. Their chemistry is all smoke and mirrors and tension and teenage angst.

It’s a meme from an old episode of Arrested Development. You’ve seen it here on tumblr, but not always with the original context. 

The character sees a paper bag in the fridge labelled “Dead Dove Do Not Eat.” He takes the bag out of the fridge, opens it up, makes a disgusted face, and then the famous “I don’t know what I expected.”

There really was a dead dove in the bag.

When you see a fic tagged with “dead dove do not eat” it basically means, “this fic is clearly labelled (tagged) indicating content that some people will not want to read. If you read it anyway, it’s your own fault. I warned you.”

Just for example, say a series has some implied cannibalism in it. 

A given fic for this series might tag with “cannibalism warning” just because it’s in the canon and the fic acknowledges or discusses  it. Some people might be okay with discussing it in the abstract, even if they don’t want to see it represented explicitly.  Others might be uncomfortable with just the concept, and the author might add “don’t like don’t read” to remind those people that they may not want to engage with the fic at all.

Because I started off by thinking “DDDNE serves as an indication of subject intensity, which is an important purpose and it’s a shame that we don’t have other things like that” but then I realized, we do! They’re just slightly less formalized than other kinds of tagging systems modern fandom tends to work with.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of intensity scales in common use in modern fandom.

The first is the violence/sex intensity scale, which tends overall to be conflated with or used as a shorthand for the intensity/maturity rating of the fic itself. And people have talked in detail about the difference between an M and an E rating, in terms of how explicitly the sex act or violence act is described. 

But sex and violence are not the only topics that warrant an intensity scale. There are plenty of topics that people (myself included) are okay with when talking about in an abstract or general way, but if the narrative starts to dig down into the real nitty gritty of the topic I might only want to read it if I’m in the right headspace, or not at all. 

And though there isn’t an official G to E scale, fandom has implicitly recognized this need and filled it with canonical tags – such as Implied/Referenced X, Canon-Typical X, or Dead Dove Do Not Eat. 

1. Implied/Referenced X tells the reader that topic X is going to be discussed, but not shown explicitly on-screen. Unless the whole broad topic is a trigger for a reader, it’s probably okay for them to read.

2. Next step up from that is Canon-Typical X, which can generally be understood as the base or standard level of intensity for topic X in fandom Y. Exactly what level of intensity that is varies from fandom to fandom – ‘canon-typical violence’ for The Avengers is probably going to be a different level of intensity than ‘canon-typical violence’ for The Witcher, just to name two offhand. But it is generally understood that if you’re reading fic for fandom Y in the first place, the level of X present in the work is probably not going to be too much for you.